Beloved

  “Beloved?” Denver would whisper. “Beloved?” and when the black eyes opened a slice all she could say was “I’m here. I’m still here.”

  Sometimes, when Beloved lay dreamy-eyed for a very long time, saying nothing, licking her lips and heaving deep sighs, Denver panicked. “What is it?” she would ask.

  “Heavy,” murmured Beloved. “This place is heavy.”

  “Would you like to sit up?”

  “No,” said the raspy voice.

  It took three days for Beloved to notice the orange patches in the darkness of the quilt. Denver was pleased because it kept her patient awake longer. She seemed totally taken with those faded scraps of orange, even made the effort to lean on her elbow and stroke them. An effort that quickly exhausted her, so Denver rearranged the quilt so its cheeriest part was in the sick girl’s sight line.

  Patience, something Denver had never known, overtook her. As long as her mother did not interfere, she was a model of compassion, turning waspish, though, when Sethe tried to help.

  “Did she take a spoonful of anything today?” Sethe inquired.

  “She shouldn’t eat with cholera.”

  “You sure that’s it? Was just a hunch of Paul D’s.”

  “I don’t know, but she shouldn’t eat anyway just yet.”

  “I think cholera people puke all the time.”

  “That’s even more reason, ain’t it?”

  “Well she shouldn’t starve to death either, Denver.”

  “Leave us alone, Ma’am. I’m taking care of her.”

  “She say anything?”

  “I’d let you know if she did.”

  Sethe looked at her daughter and thought, Yes, she has been lonesome. Very lonesome.

  “Wonder where Here Boy got off to?” Sethe thought a change of subject was needed.

  “He won’t be back,” said Denver.

  “How you know?”

  “I just know.” Denver took a square of sweet bread off the plate.

  Back in the keeping room, Denver was about to sit down when Beloved’s eyes flew wide open. Denver felt her heart race. It wasn’t that she was looking at that face for the first time with no trace of sleep in it, or that the eyes were big and black. Nor was it that the whites of them were much too white—blue-white. It was that deep down in those big black eyes there was no expression at all.

  “Can I get you something?”

  Beloved looked at the sweet bread in Denver’s hands and Denver held it out to her. She smiled then and Denver’s heart stopped bouncing and sat down—relieved and easeful like a traveler who had made it home.

  From that moment and through everything that followed, sugar could always be counted on to please her. It was as though sweet things were what she was born for. Honey as well as the wax it came in, sugar sandwiches, the sludgy molasses gone hard and brutal in the can, lemonade, taffy and any type of dessert Sethe brought home from the restaurant. She gnawed a cane stick to flax and kept the strings in her mouth long after the syrup had been sucked away. Denver laughed, Sethe smiled and Paul D said it made him sick to his stomach.

  Sethe believed it was a recovering body’s need—after an illness—for quick strength. But it was a need that went on and on into glowing health because Beloved didn’t go anywhere. There didn’t seem anyplace for her to go. She didn’t mention one, or have much of an idea of what she was doing in that part of the country or where she had been. They believed the fever had caused her memory to fail just as it kept her slow-moving. A young woman, about nineteen or twenty, and slender, she moved like a heavier one or an older one, holding on to furniture, resting her head in the palm of her hand as though it was too heavy for a neck alone.

  “You just gonna feed her? From now on?” Paul D, feeling ungenerous, and surprised by it, heard the irritability in his voice.

  “Denver likes her. She’s no real trouble. I thought we’d wait till her breath was better. She still sounds a little lumbar to me.”

  “Something funny ’bout that gal,” Paul D said, mostly to himself.

  “Funny how?”

  “Acts sick, sounds sick, but she don’t look sick. Good skin, bright eyes and strong as a bull.”

  “She’s not strong. She can hardly walk without holding on to something.”

  “That’s what I mean. Can’t walk, but I seen her pick up the rocker with one hand.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Don’t tell me. Ask Denver. She was right there with her.”

  “Denver! Come in here a minute.”

  Denver stopped rinsing the porch and stuck her head in the window.

  “Paul D says you and him saw Beloved pick up the rocking chair single-handed. That so?”

  Long, heavy lashes made Denver’s eyes seem busier than they were; deceptive, even when she held a steady gaze as she did now on Paul D. “No,” she said. “I didn’t see no such thing.”

  Paul D frowned but said nothing. If there had been an open latch between them, it would have closed.

  RAINWATER held on to pine needles for dear life and Beloved could not take her eyes off Sethe. Stooping to shake the damper, or snapping sticks for kindlin, Sethe was licked, tasted, eaten by Beloved’s eyes. Like a familiar, she hovered, never leaving the room Sethe was in unless required and told to. She rose early in the dark to be there, waiting, in the kitchen when Sethe came down to make fast bread before she left for work. In lamplight, and over the flames of the cooking stove, their two shadows clashed and crossed on the ceiling like black swords. She was in the window at two when Sethe returned, or the doorway; then the porch, its steps, the path, the road, till finally, surrendering to the habit, Beloved began inching down Bluestone Road further and further each day to meet Sethe and walk her back to 124. It was as though every afternoon she doubted anew the older woman’s return.

  Sethe was flattered by Beloved’s open, quiet devotion. The same adoration from her daughter (had it been forthcoming) would have annoyed her; made her chill at the thought of having raised a ridiculously dependent child. But the company of this sweet, if peculiar, guest pleased her the way a zealot pleases his teacher.

  Time came when lamps had to be lit early because night arrived sooner and sooner. Sethe was leaving for work in the dark; Paul D was walking home in it. On one such evening dark and cool, Sethe cut a rutabaga into four pieces and left them stewing. She gave Denver a half peck of peas to sort and soak overnight. Then she sat herself down to rest. The heat of the stove made her drowsy and she was sliding into sleep when she felt Beloved touch her. A touch no heavier than a feather but loaded, nevertheless, with desire. Sethe stirred and looked around. First at Beloved’s soft new hand on her shoulder, then into her eyes. The longing she saw there was bottomless. Some plea barely in control. Sethe patted Beloved’s fingers and glanced at Denver, whose eyes were fixed on her pea-sorting task.

  “Where your diamonds?” Beloved searched Sethe’s face.

  “Diamonds? What would I be doing with diamonds?”

  “On your ears.”

  “Wish I did. I had some crystal once. A present from a lady I worked for.”

  “Tell me,” said Beloved, smiling a wide happy smile. “Tell me your diamonds.”

  It became a way to feed her. Just as Denver discovered and relied on the delightful effect sweet things had on Beloved, Sethe learned the profound satisfaction Beloved got from storytelling. It amazed Sethe (as much as it pleased Beloved) because every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost. She and Baby Suggs had agreed without saying so that it was unspeakable; to Denver’s inquiries Sethe gave short replies or rambling incomplete reveries. Even with Paul D, who had shared some of it and to whom she could talk with at least a measure of calm, the hurt was always there—like a tender place in the corner of her mouth that the bit left.

  But, as she began telling about the earrings, she found herself wanting to, liking it. Perhaps it was Beloved’s distance from the events itself, or her thirst for hearing
it—in any case it was an unexpected pleasure.

  Above the patter of the pea sorting and the sharp odor of cooking rutabaga, Sethe explained the crystal that once hung from her ears.

  “That lady I worked for in Kentucky gave them to me when I got married. What they called married back there and back then. I guess she saw how bad I felt when I found out there wasn’t going to be no ceremony, no preacher. Nothing. I thought there should be something—something to say it was right and true. I didn’t want it to be just me moving over a bit of pallet full of corn husks. Or just me bringing my night bucket into his cabin. I thought there should be some ceremony. Dancing maybe. A little sweet william in my hair.” Sethe smiled. “I never saw a wedding, but I saw Mrs. Garner’s wedding gown in the press, and heard her go on about what it was like. Two pounds of currants in the cake, she said, and four whole sheep. The people were still eating the next day. That’s what I wanted. A meal maybe, where me and Halle and all the Sweet Home men sat down and ate something special. Invite some of the other coloredpeople from over by Covington or High Trees—those places Sixo used to sneak off to. But it wasn’t going to be nothing. They said it was all right for us to be husband and wife and that was it. All of it.

  “Well, I made up my mind to have at the least a dress that wasn’t the sacking I worked in. So I took to stealing fabric, and wound up with a dress you wouldn’t believe. The top was from two pillow cases in her mending basket. The front of the skirt was a dresser scarf a candle fell on and burnt a hole in, and one of her old sashes we used to test the flatiron on. Now the back was a problem for the longest time. Seem like I couldn’t find a thing that wouldn’t be missed right away. Because I had to take it apart afterwards and put all the pieces back where they were. Now Halle was patient, waiting for me to finish it. He knew I wouldn’t go ahead without having it. Finally I took the mosquito netting from a nail out the barn. We used it to strain jelly through. I washed it and soaked it best I could and tacked it on for the back of the skirt. And there I was, in the worst-looking gown you could imagine. Only my wool shawl kept me from looking like a haint peddling. I wasn’t but fourteen years old, so I reckon that’s why I was so proud of myself.

  “Anyhow, Mrs. Garner must have seen me in it. I thought I was stealing smart, and she knew everything I did. Even our honeymoon: going down to the cornfield with Halle. That’s where we went first. A Saturday afternoon it was. He begged sick so he wouldn’t have to go work in town that day. Usually he worked Saturdays and Sundays to pay off Baby Suggs’ freedom. But he begged sick and I put on my dress and we walked into the corn holding hands. I can still smell the ears roasting yonder where the Pauls and Sixo was. Next day Mrs. Garner crooked her finger at me and took me upstairs to her bedroom. She opened up a wooden box and took out a pair of crystal earrings. She said, ‘I want you to have these, Sethe.’ I said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ ‘Are your ears pierced?’ she said. I said, ‘No, ma’am.’ ‘Well do it,’ she said, ‘so you can wear them. I want you to have them and I want you and Halle to be happy.’ I thanked her but I never did put them on till I got away from there. One day after I walked into this here house Baby Suggs unknotted my underskirt and took em out. I sat right here by the stove with Denver in my arms and let her punch holes in my ears for to wear them.”

  “I never saw you in no earrings,” said Denver. “Where are they now?”

  “Gone,” said Sethe. “Long gone,” and she wouldn’t say another word. Until the next time when all three of them ran through the wind back into the house with rainsoaked sheets and petticoats. Panting, laughing, they draped the laundry over the chairs and table. Beloved filled herself with water from the bucket and watched while Sethe rubbed Denver’s hair with a piece of toweling.

  “Maybe we should unbraid it?” asked Sethe.

  “Uh uh. Tomorrow.” Denver crouched forward at the thought of a fine-tooth comb pulling her hair.

  “Today is always here,” said Sethe. “Tomorrow, never.”

  “It hurts,” Denver said.

  “Comb it every day, it won’t.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Your woman she never fix up your hair?” Beloved asked.

  Sethe and Denver looked up at her. After four weeks they still had not got used to the gravelly voice and the song that seemed to lie in it. Just outside music it lay, with a cadence not like theirs.

  “Your woman she never fix up your hair?” was clearly a question for Sethe, since that’s who she was looking at.

  “My woman? You mean my mother? If she did, I don’t remember. I didn’t see her but a few times out in the fields and once when she was working indigo. By the time I woke up in the morning, she was in line. If the moon was bright they worked by its light. Sunday she slept like a stick. She must of nursed me two or three weeks—that’s the way the others did. Then she went back in rice and I sucked from another woman whose job it was. So to answer you, no. I reckon not. She never fixed my hair nor nothing. She didn’t even sleep in the same cabin most nights I remember. Too far from the line-up, I guess. One thing she did do. She picked me up and carried me behind the smokehouse. Back there she opened up her dress front and lifted her breast and pointed under it. Right on her rib was a circle and a cross burnt right in the skin. She said, ‘This is your ma’am. This,’ and she pointed. ‘I am the only one got this mark now. The rest dead. If something happens to me and you can’t tell me by my face, you can know me by this mark.’ Scared me so. All I could think of was how important this was and how I needed to have something important to say back, but I couldn’t think of anything so I just said what I thought. ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I said. ‘But how will you know me? How will you know me? Mark me, too,’ I said. ‘Mark the mark on me too.’” Sethe chuckled.

  “Did she?” asked Denver.

  “She slapped my face.”

  “What for?”

  “I didn’t understand it then. Not till I had a mark of my own.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Hung. By the time they cut her down nobody could tell whether she had a circle and a cross or not, least of all me and I did look.” Sethe gathered hair from the comb and leaning back tossed it into the fire. It exploded into stars and the smell infuriated them. “Oh, my Jesus,” she said and stood up so suddenly the comb she had parked in Denver’s hair fell to the floor.

  “Ma’am? What’s the matter with you, Ma’am?”

  Sethe walked over to a chair, lifted a sheet and stretched it as wide as her arms would go. Then she folded, refolded and double-folded it. She took another. Neither was completely dry but the folding felt too fine to stop. She had to do something with her hands because she was remembering something she had forgotten she knew. Something privately shameful that had seeped into a slit in her mind right behind the slap on her face and the circled cross.

  “Why they hang your ma’am?” Denver asked. This was the first time she had heard anything about her mother’s mother. Baby Suggs was the only grandmother she knew.

  “I never found out. It was a lot of them,” she said, but what was getting clear and clearer as she folded and refolded damp laundry was the woman called Nan who took her hand and yanked her away from the pile before she could make out the mark. Nan was the one she knew best, who was around all day, who nursed babies, cooked, had one good arm and half of another. And who used different words. Words Sethe understood then but could neither recall nor repeat now. She believed that must be why she remembered so little before Sweet Home except singing and dancing and how crowded it was. What Nan told her she had forgotten, along with the language she told it in. The same language her ma’am spoke, and which would never come back. But the message—that was and had been there all along. Holding the damp white sheets against her chest, she was picking meaning out of a code she no longer understood. Nighttime. Nan holding her with her good arm, waving the stump of the other in the air. “Telling you. I am telling you, small girl Sethe,” and she did that. She told Sethe that her mother and Nan were tog
ether from the sea. Both were taken up many times by the crew. “She threw them all away but you. The one from the crew she threw away on the island. The others from more whites she also threw away. Without names, she threw them. You she gave the name of the black man. She put her arms around him. The others she did not put her arms around. Never. Never. Telling you. I am telling you, small girl Sethe.”

  As small girl Sethe, she was unimpressed. As grown-up woman Sethe she was angry, but not certain at what. A mighty wish for Baby Suggs broke over her like surf. In the quiet following its splash, Sethe looked at the two girls sitting by the stove: her sickly, shallow-minded boarder, her irritable, lonely daughter. They seemed little and far away.

  “Paul D be here in a minute,” she said.

  Denver sighed with relief. For a minute there, while her mother stood folding the wash lost in thought, she clamped her teeth and prayed it would stop. Denver hated the stories her mother told that did not concern herself, which is why Amy was all she ever asked about. The rest was a gleaming, powerful world made more so by Denver’s absence from it. Not being in it, she hated it and wanted Beloved to hate it too, although there was no chance of that at all. Beloved took every opportunity to ask some funny question and get Sethe going. Denver noticed how greedy she was to hear Sethe talk. Now she noticed something more. The questions Beloved asked: “Where your diamonds?” “Your woman she never fix up your hair?” And most perplexing: Tell me your earrings.

  How did she know?

  BELOVED WAS shining and Paul D didn’t like it. Women did what strawberry plants did before they shot out their thin vines: the quality of the green changed. Then the vine threads came, then the buds. By the time the white petals died and the mint-colored berry poked out, the leaf shine was gilded tight and waxy. That’s how Beloved looked—gilded and shining. Paul D took to having Sethe on waking, so that later, when he went down the white stairs where she made bread under Beloved’s gaze, his head was clear.